Escape!

by Bova, Ben

  Hambone nodded happily. “I broke an arm on one of ‘em.” His voice sounded as if his nose was stopped up, like a prize-fighter’s voice after he’s been hit too many times.

  The next boy was Noisy, who got his name because he hardly ever talked. He was about Danny’s own size. He just nodded when Ralph introduced him. But he watched everything, listened to every word that was said. And his eyes burned with a fierce glow that made Danny wonder what he’d done to get into the Center.

  Vic and Coop were two ordinary-looking guys. Midget was the last of the gang. He was a kid of fifteen who looked like he was only twelve. He was smaller and skinnier than even Danny. He’s the guy who goes into the tunnel to cut the phone line, Danny decided.

  “Okay,” Danny said to them. “Now we all want to get out of this dump. And we’re going to do it. My way. I know how to get out.”

  They all looked at each other, nodding and grinning.

  “How?” Ralph asked. He had taken the chair by the desk.

  Danny, standing by the window, answered, “That’s my business. I got the plan right here in my head, and I ain’t tellin’ nobody. You don’t like it that way, then you can get up and leave. Right now.”

  Nobody moved.

  “Okay. Now... it’s goin’ to take hard work, and some time. But we’ll bust this place wide open.”

  “What d’you want us to do?”

  Danny said, “I got jobs for all of you. They might look stupid right now, but they’re goin’ to help us break out.”

  “What kind of jobs?” Ralph asked.

  “I want you and Hambone to get on the cleanup crew,” said Danny.

  “Hey, that’s work!” Hambone said.

  Nodding, Danny went on, “I told you it’s going to be work. Hard work, too. But it’s the only way to get out of here.”

  “What’re we supposed to be doin’?” Ralph asked. “Besides talking to th’ birds and flowers, that is.”

  “Just hang loose and don’t act suspicious.” Danny turned to Noisy. “Think you can get yourself into the photography class? We’re going to need a camera and some film.”

  Noisy nodded.

  “Good,” said Danny. “Midget, I want you to get an afternoon job in the administration building. Any kind of job, as long as it’s in that building.”

  “Can do,” Midget answered.

  Turning to Vic and Coop, Danny said, “You two guys got to get yourselves into the maintenance crew. Try to get jobs that involve big machinery, like the heaters. Okay?”

  Vic shrugged. “I don’t know nothing about machinery.”

  “Then learn!” Danny snapped.

  Ralph gave Danny a hard look. “And what’re you goin’ to be doing?”

  “Me?” Danny smiled. “I’m gettin’ myself a job with SPECS. He’s got all the brains around here. He’s got to tell me a few more things before we can blow this dump.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  They all met again in the cafeteria two days later. Each boy reported that he had gotten the job Danny wanted him to take.

  “Good,” Danny said as he hunched over the dinner dishes. He kept his voice low enough so that the others could just about hear it over the racket made by the rest of the crowd.

  “Now listen. This is the last time we meet all together like this. From now on, I’ll see each one of you alone, or maybe two of you together, at the most. Stay cool, work your jobs like you really mean it. In a month or so, we’ll be out of here.”

  When he got back to his room, there was an envelope on the floor just inside his door. Danny leaned down and picked it up, then shut the door as he looked it over. It was from outside. His name and the Center’s address were neatly typed on the envelope.

  The return address, in the upper left corner of the envelope, was from some insurance company. Then he spotted the hand-typed initials, LM, alongside the printing. It was from Laurie!

  Danny ripped the envelope open as he went to his desk and flicked on the lamp. He had trouble pulling the letter out of the envelope.

  Dear Danny:

  I’m sorry about the blow-up on Christmas Day. I still have your present. I will give it to you when I visit you again. I won’t be visiting again for a month or so. I think it might be better if we both sort of think things over before we see each other again.

  I still love you, Danny. And I miss you a lot. I know it is very hard for you inside the Center. But we both have a lot of growing up to do before we can be happy together.

  Love,

  Laurie

  Danny read the letter twice, then crumpled it in his fist and threw it in the wastebasket. For the first time in weeks, he had to take an asthma pill before he could get to sleep that night.

  The weeks crawled by slowly.

  Danny got his job at the computer center, down in the basement of the administration building. He often saw Midget there. Midget was working somewhere upstairs. SPECS’ home was a relaxing place to work in. It was quiet. For some reason, everybody tended to talk softly. SPECS himself made the most noise—a steady hum of electrical power. When he was working at some special problem, SPECS made a singsong noise while he flashed hundreds of little lights on the front control panel of his main unit.

  Danny’s job was to help the adults who programed SPECS and feed him new information. He carried heavy reels of magnetic tape down the corridors between SPECS’ big, boxlike consoles. There was a store room for the tapes that weren’t being used, back behind the main computer room.

  “These tapes carry SPECS’ memory on them,” said one of the computer programmers to Danny. “They’re like a library... except that SPECS is the only one who can read them.”

  After a few weeks, Danny got to know most of the people who ran the computer. More important, they got to know him. They told him what to do when they needed him. The rest of the time they ignored him.

  Which suited Danny fine. He found a few little corners of the big computer room where he could talk to SPECS, ask questions. If anyone saw him sitting at one of the tiny desks, talking to the TV screen on it, they would smile and say:

  “Good kid, learning how to work with the machine.”

  One of the first things Danny learned from SPECS was that every conversation he had with the machine was stored on tape.

  “Has anybody checked these tapes?”

  “I HAVE NO RECORD OF THAT.”

  Danny spent a week quietly gathering the right tapes and erasing all his talks with SPECS. Now no one could ever find out what he had said to the computer. Then he got to work on his escape plan. He had a pocket-sized camera now, which Noisy had taken from the photography class.

  “What’s the layout of the power station?” Danny asked quietly. And when SPECS showed the right diagram on the TV screen, click! Danny got it on film.

  “How does the power generator work?” Click.

  “When the generator breaks down, what goes wrong with it most often?” Click.

  “How’s the emergency generator hooked into the Center’s main power lines?” Click.

  Danny would keep the photographs and study them in his room for hours each night. And, of course, he erased all traces of his questions and their answers from SPECS’ memory tapes.

  The winter snows came and buried the Center in white. Ralph and Hambone, faces red from the wind, noses sniffling, wailed loudly to Danny about all the snow-shoveling that the clean-up crew was doing.

  “I told you it’d be hard work,” Danny said, trying hard not to laugh. If he got them angry, they could crack him like a teacup.

  Danny started Vic and Coop, on the maintenance crew, checking into the electrical power lines in each building. He had to make sure he understood all about the Center’s electrical system.

  Vic said, “I ain’t seen no other emergency generators any place. There’s just the one at the main power station. None of the other buildings even has a flashlight battery laying around, far as I can tell.”

  Danny stopped Midget one
afternoon in the hallway of the administration building.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Okay. Got the phone line figured out. Any time you want to pull the cable, I’m all set.”

  “Good. Now, think you can find out when the maintenance man leaves the power station alone?”

  Midget said, “He don’t. There’s always a kid in there.”

  “I know. That’s what I mean. Try and find out when the kid’s in there by himself. And who the kid is. Maybe we can get him on our side.”

  Nodding, Midget said, “Groovy. I’ll get the word to you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The snow melted a little, then more fell. Late in February, during a slushy cold rainstorm, Laurie visited the Center.

  Danny ran through the driving rain toward the administration building, hunched over, hands in pockets, feet getting soaked in puddles.

  She picked some day to come, he said to himself. She’s gettin’ to be nothing but trouble. Why’d she come today? And then he heard himself saying, Maybe she’s come to say goodbye... that she don’t want me any more.

  By the time he got to the visitor’s room, Danny felt cold, wet, angry, and—even though he didn’t want to admit it—more than a little scared. He stopped at the water fountain outside the door and took an asthma pill. Then he went in.

  Laurie was standing by the window, looking out at the rain. Danny saw that she was prettier than ever. Not so worried-looking any more. Dressed better, too.

  She turned as he softly shut the door.

  “Oh, Danny... you’re soaking wet. I’m sorry, it’s my fault.”

  He grinned at her. “It’s okay. It’ll dry.”

  They stood at opposite ends of the little room, about five paces apart. Then suddenly Danny crossed over toward her, and she was in his arms again.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling at her, “you even smell good.”

  “You look fine,” Laurie said. “Wet... but fine.”

  They sat on the sofa and talked for a long time.

  Finally Laurie said, “Dr. Tenny told me you’re doing very well. You’re working hard and doing good in class. He thinks you’re on the right road.”

  Danny laughed. “Good, let him think that.”

  For the first time, the old worried look crept back into Laurie’s face. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see. Maybe you better start lookin’ at travel ads. See where you want to go in Canada. Or maybe Mexico.”

  “Danny, you’re not...”

  He silenced her with an upraised hand. “Don’t worry about it. This time it’ll work.”

  Laurie shook her head. “Danny, forget about it. You can’t escape....”

  “I can and I will!” he snapped.

  “Well, then, forget about me,” Laurie snapped back.

  “What?”

  “Danny, I’m just getting to the point where I can live without looking over my shoulder to see who’s following me. I’ve spent all my life with you and the other kids, dodging the cops, fighting in gangs. For the first time in my life, I’m out of that! I’m living like a free human being. I like it! Can’t you understand? I don’t want to go back to living scared every minute....”

  “You mean if I....”

  She grasped his hands and looked straight into his eyes. “I mean I want you to walk out of this place a free man. Not only free, but a man. Not a kid who doesn’t care what he does. Not a convict who has to run every day and hide every night. I’ll wait for you for a hundred years, Danny, if I have to. But only if you’ll promise me that we can both be free when you get out.”

  Danny pulled his hands away. “I’m not waiting any hundred years! Not even one year. I’m busting out of here, and then I’m coming to get you. And you’d better be there when I come for you!”

  She shook her head. “I won’t go back to living that way, Danny.”

  “Oh no? We’ll find out. And soon, too.”

  “I’d better go now,” Laurie got up from the sofa.

  “If you blab any of this to Tenny....”

  She glared at him. “I won’t. Not because I’m afraid of you. I won’t say a word to anybody because I want you to decide. You’ve got to figure it out straight in your own mind. You’ve got a chance to make something good out of your life. If you try to break out of the Center, you’ll just be running away from that chance. You’ll be telling me that you’re afraid of trying to stand on your own feet. That you want to be caught again and kept in jail.”

  “Afraid?” Danny felt his temper boil.

  “That’s right,” Laurie said. “If you try to break out of here, you and me are finished.”

  She walked to the door and left. Danny stood in the middle of the room, fists clenched at his sides, trembling with anger, chest hurting.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  That night, after dinner, Danny and the other boys met in the gym. They took a basketball and shot baskets for a while, then sat together on one of the benches. The gym was only half full, and not as noisy as usual.

  “Okay,” Danny said. “I got enough scoop on how the generator works and how to blow it. We’re going to turn off all the electricity in the Center and walk out of here while everybody else is runnin’ around in the dark.”

  Their faces showed what he wanted to see: They liked the idea.

  “I thought it was something like that.”

  “It’ll be a blast.”

  Noisy asked, “What about the emergency generator?”

  “Got it all worked out,” Danny said. “Been getting all the info I need from SPECS.”

  “When do we go?”

  “Tomorrow night,” said Danny.

  Hambone whistled softly. “You sure ain’t fooling around.”

  “What time?”

  “Six o’clock. Almost everybody’ll be in the cafeteria for dinner. All the lights go, all the phones go, everybody goes crazy, and we split.”

  “Great!” said Midget. “The maintenance man at the power station goes to the cafeteria at six. That’s when he leaves a kid in there alone for about fifteen minutes.”

  “I know, you told me,” Danny said. “That’s why I picked that time. Who’s the kid tomorrow? Can we talk him into going with us or do we have to lump him?”

  Midget answered, “It’s Lacey. I don’t think he’ll go along with us.”

  “Lacey!”

  Ralph laughed, low and mean. “Good old Lacey, huh? That’s cool. I been wantin’ to split that black big-mouth’s head ever since he became lightweight champ. Hambone and me are going to have real fun takin’ care of him.”

  Hambone nodded and giggled.

  Danny didn’t answer Ralph. But somehow he felt unhappy that it was going to be Lacey.

  He hardly slept at all that night. And the next morning he just sat in class, paying no attention to anything around him. Danny’s mind was a jumble of thoughts, pictures, voices. He kept trying to think about the escape plan, what he had to do to knock out the generator, every detail.

  But he kept seeing Laurie, kept hearing her say, “Then you can forget about me.”

  He tried to get her out of his head, but instead he saw Lacey grinning at him, boxing gloves weaving in front of his face. He remembered their fight. He tried to make himself hate Lacey. It didn’t work. Lacey fought clean and hard. Danny couldn’t hate him.

  “Hey, this isn’t the history class, you know.”

  Danny snapped his attention to the classroom. Joe Tenny was standing over him, grinning. The other guys had left. The class was over.

  “I... uh, I was thinkin’ about... things.”

  “Sure you were.” Joe laughed. “With your eyes closed.”

  “I wasn’t asleep.” Danny got up from his chair.

  Joe nodded. “Okay, you were wide awake. Look, why don’t you just grab a quick sandwich at the cafeteria and meet me in my office in about fifteen minutes. Got something I want to show you.”

  Every nerve in Danny’s body tighte
ned. His chest started to feel heavy, raw. He knows about it!

  When he opened the door to Dr. Tenny’s office, Joe was standing in front of his easel, slapping paint on a canvas with a small curved knife.

  “Hi.... Sit down a minute.”

  In one hand, Joe held a paint-dabbed piece of cardboard. He would dip the edge of the knife into a blob of color, and then smear the color across the canvas. Danny watched him.

  Finally Joe stepped back, cocked his head to one side and squinted at the canvas, then tossed the cardboard and knife to the floor at the base of the easel.

  “What to you think?” he asked.

  Danny stared hard at the painting. It looked like some of the dark blobs were going to be boats. There were the beginnings of mountains and clouds in the background.

  “Okay, don’t answer,” Joe said. “I’m just starting it. Wait’ll you see the finished product!”

  He yanked open his top desk drawer and pulled out a stubby cigar.

  “Some days it just gets to be too much,” he said. “Then I’ve got to slap paint around or go nuts.”

  Danny, sitting in the chair, said nothing.

  Joe puffed the cigar to life. “I’ve been having a little discussion with a few members of the Governor’s council.... About how much money the Center’s going to need next year. I’m in no mood to work anymore today.”

  Danny shrugged.

  “You like airplanes, don’t you? Ever been up in one?”

  “No...”

  “Okay, come on. Friend of mine just bought a new plane for himself. Said I could play with it this afternoon. Want to come?”

  With a deep breath of relief, Danny said, “Sure!”

  They drove to the airfield in Joe’s car. There were still banks of snow along the highway, brown and rotting. The sky was clear, though, and the sun was shining.

  The plane sparkled in the sunlight. Painted red and white, it had one engine, a low wing, and a cabin that seated four. It was parked beside a hangar in a small airfield that was used only for private planes.